Is argumentation in digital history different? how is it the same? Argumentation in digital history is not innately different from argumentation found in other forms of history. If you want to reach historians, write for historians. The signposting of historiography and/or historical context helps other historians to understand where your argument fits in the larger disciplinary conversations.

I knelt down with my knees in the sand, feeling a bit silly and bit nostalgic of my more artistic childhood, and held my audio recorder close to the tips of the waves as they rolled into the beach’s shoreline. I was careful to block the wind with my body because, as I learned the hard way, the best way to filter out the sounds of the wind is to block the wind as much as possible from hitting the recording device. Mufflers can only block so much. I took a few recordings, each just over three minutes to be sure I had ample audio recorded to work with and ample space for mistakes (per Dr. Barber’s advice when recording soundscapes).

I’m publishing my position statement for “Arguing with Digital History”, a workshop being held at George Mason University in September. We were asked to respond to the following questions:

How is argumentation in digital history different from other forms of history, and how is it the same?

Should DH argumentation be inherently disciplinary, or should it be interdisciplinary?

Why is there not more digital history that makes explicit arguments in conversation with the scholarly literature, for an academic audience? What are the barriers to making arguments in digital history? If possible, include examples from your projects.

What successful models have you found for making explicit arguments in conversation with the scholarly literature for an academic audience? In those models, what is the relationship between traditional venues for publication and digital projects?

If applicable, how have you used digital history to make explicit arguments in conversation with the scholarly literature, for an academic audience? What is the relationship between the arguments you have made and the digital part of your project?

This is a blog post I’ve had sitting around in some form for a few years; I wanted to post it today because: 1) It’s about peer review, and it’s peer review week! I just read this nice piece by Ken Wissoker in its defense. 2) There’s a conference on argumentation in Digital History this weekend at George Mason which I couldn’t attend for family reasons but wanted to resonate with at a distance. It’s still sketchy in places, but I’m putting it up as a provocation to think (and to tell me) more about the history of peer review, and how fundamentally malleable scholarly norms are, rather than as a completed historical essay in its own right.

To mark the launch of the ODI’s Data Ethics Canvas, Amanda Smith and Peter Wells share the thought behind it, why it is important and how they hope it will be used by organisations and sectors

Data is emerging as a vital and virtual form of infrastructure that we rely on. This creates the opportunity to build better societies but also the risk that we lose trust, not just in data or facts but also in businesses and governments.

One of the ways that we can address this is to improve data ethics.

The choices made about what data is collected and how it is used should not be unfair, discriminatory or deceptive. Our new paper and tool will help you learn how to do this.

Sectors and organisations are being called upon to develop their own data ethics principles, policies and processes. Increasingly, those collecting, sharing and using data are exploring the ethics of their practices and, in some cases, being forced to confront those ethics in the face of public criticism. Debates are accelerating on issues like the monetisation of personal data, bias in data sources and algorithms, and the consequences of under-representation in data.

For some time, the Open Data Institute has been working on measures to help organisations build trust in how they collect, use and share data, and to foster better use of data overall. Trust is an essential component of society. When trust breaks down, the public lose faith in the institutions that provide them with services, and organisations lose the ability to share data and collaborate in ways that could improve all our lives.

Cities capture people’s imaginations because they are a whirlwind of change, adaptation, and challenge. Cities change on almost a daily basis, with the influx and exit of commuters. To survive over time, cities have to adapt to economic change, migration patterns, and citizens’ needs. Cities also have to face society’s toughest problems—poverty, crime, homelessness, and more—all while delivering the public services that help make a city hum.

In the early part of the twenty-first century, information and communications technologies (ICTs) have come to be seen as a way to help cities thrive. With the right deployment of technology, cities can become “smart” so that they can better deliver public services. Running parallel to the “smart city” discussion is the notion of inclusion; that is, a city is better off if a wide range of people participate in how it grows and evolves. In this context, inclusion has a lot to do with diversity—in the economy, civic life, and urban design. The upshot can be greater equity, as opportunities for economic and social growth open up to a wide range of a city’s population. ICTs may be among the tools deployed to enhance inclusion.

Can the “smart” and the “inclusive” come together in a way to make our cities better places to live for everyone? An answer in the affirmative is possible, but not inevitable. For this to happen, stakeholders—mayors, businesspeople, and community leaders—must have an appreciation of three things:

The smart city and the inclusive city are very different

One (inclusiveness) does not follow necessarily from the other (a smart city).

Action is necessary to bridge the gap between a smart and an inclusive

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In a previous post in this series I criticized the vague spatial metaphors literary critics use to understand the text and nature of critical inquiry. Think of those vague spatial metaphors as the founding “myth” of post-war literary criticism, one that allowed the explication of “meaning” to take center stage. In advocating a mode of literary investigation organized around computation and form, I submit that I have been, in effect, proposing a new founding myth.“Myth”, I suppose, is not quite the right word. After all myths are stories and that complex of spatial metaphors is not a story, nor is my computational alternative. “Conceptual matrix” might be a better, though more elaborate, term. But myth has the right valence, suggesting as it does something of an unmoved conceptual mover. It is, horror of horrors, foundational. That old and still dominant myth elides the distinction between ordinary reading and interpretive reading – they’re both just reading, no? – and is all but blind to the formal features of texts, though it supports a vigorous discourse in which formalism is opposed to context and history. The myth I’ve been proposing insists that interpretive analysis is different from ordinary reading, though this is not a focal point in this mythography…

A few months ago, Celeste Sharpe, then a graduate student at George Mason University (GMU), defended what is purportedly the first born-digital dissertation in the discipline of history. Sharpe describes her project, They Need You! Disability, Visual Culture, and the Poster Child, 1945–1980, as an examination of “the history of the national poster child—an official representative for both a disease and an organization—in post–World War II America.” In her project, Sharpe argues that “poster child imagery is vital for understanding the cultural pervasiveness of the idea of disability as diagnosis and how that understanding marginalized political avenues and policies outside of disease eradication in 20th-century America.” AHA Today caught up with Sharpe recently about the process of creating a born-digital dissertation, advice for graduate students considering similar projects, and future prospects.

Any attempt at knowledge production has to answer the basic question of what it is. But, before long, it must also address the question of why it is.

As early as the 1990s sociologists were asking how to study the way internet technologies were clearly changing societies. The term digital sociology does not make an appearance until 2009. By then, communication studies and internet research had dominated in the study of the internet with some forays into the consequences for society.

Digital Sociology in the broadest sense addresses the question of what such reinvention could or should mean in new circumstances where the content of this ‘newness’ is defined largely by the digital.

Carrigan is dealing with temporality and transformation. Each assumes there is something unique about the current social system that relates to digital technologies and that whatever that is, it is transformative.

Deborah Lupton takes up the mantle of describing digital sociology by appealing to the postulates formation the classicists among us should appreciate:

Professional digital practice: using digital tools as part of professional practice – build networks, construct e-portfolios, build online profiles, publicize and share research

Analysis of digital technology use: research the ways in which people’s use of digital technologies configures their sense of self and their embodiment of social relations, the role of digital media in the creation or reproduction of social institutions and structures

Digital Data Analysis: using naturally occurring digital data for social research

This is the concept we use in the digital sociology master’s degree program at VCU. We also drew heavily on this formulation in the book “Digital Sociologies”, which I co-edited with Jessie Daniels and Karen Gregory.